


Crookshanks

by VintageOT5



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Boarding School AU, Fluff, No Romance...yet, One Shot, also there's a bunny, and I guess a reference to smoking, and a Harry Potter reference, but nothing to make a big deal of, this was just for fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 05:50:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4992703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VintageOT5/pseuds/VintageOT5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Zayn and Louis are roommates at boarding school and Louis wins a bunny off of Harry Styles. Zayn really needs to stop Louis and Harry from getting him involved in breaking the school rules all the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crookshanks

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally just for fun, no ulterior motives. Well, sort of.
> 
> I want to see if maybe I could work with this and start making a bigger story out of it. Very lighthearted, humorous boarding school antics and all.
> 
> Let me know at the end if you'd like to hear more of their antics!
> 
> Enjoy :)

The trouble with being friends with Louis Tomlinson, Zayn knew, was that you could never avoid trouble. And it wasn’t because you were a troublemaker yourself; it was because he would ask you to help him with whatever crazy antic he was pulling, and his twinkly blue eyes and mischievous grin would rope you into his plot with no questions asked. So Zayn was used to being reeled in to whatever scheme Louis had up his sleeves, no matter how reluctantly.

But whatever Zayn expected his roommate to ask of him, it wasn’t this.

“Is that…a rabbit?” Zayn asked, blinking at the gingery-brown fluff in front of him.

Louis was grinning. “Named him Crookshanks, you know, after that cat from Harry Potter?”

He knew the one. Zayn kept blinking; judging by the thing’s slightly squashed face, Crookshanks wasn’t a bad name for it at all. “Where exactly did it come from?”

“Won him just now,” Louis said, beaming with pride. “He was the prize in a game of cards with Harry Styles.”

Zayn raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. Now it made sense; anything was possible if Harry Styles was involved. He could pull all sorts of things off right under the headmaster’s nose.

“Is he, um, yours?”

Louis looked as if he had been waiting for Zayn to ask. “He’s ours, Malik, yours and mine!”

Zayn glared. “Oh, no. No. You aren’t dragging me into this one. That thing belongs solely to you.”

Louis pouted, lifting the fluffball closer to Zayn. “But look at his widdow face.”

Zayn looked at it again, watching its whiskers twitch and its feet wiggle. Yeah, it was a little cute, but no way was he admitting that. He looked back up at Louis and immediately realized he’d made a rookie mistake; now he was looking directly into Louis’ big, blue, pleading eyes and watching his lower lip tremble. He should have known better; it took a stronger will than Zayn’s to say no to that face.

Zayn huffed, rolling his eyes. “Fine. But you’re feeding it and keeping it on your side of the room.”

Immediately Louis’s countenance was bright again. “That’s the spirit!”

Zayn couldn’t disagree more, but he kept his mouth shut.

“You can be his uncle or something then, Malik. You know, the uncle who babysits him while his dad goes to that new movie with Harry, like he promised.”

This last bit was said rather hurriedly, and Zayn stared at him, incredulous.

“So…you want me to…”

“Watch him for the evening.”

“You want me…to rabbit-sit…”

Louis made a face, plopping the bunny back into the cardboard box he’d lifted him from earlier. “It won’t be for very long, promise. Just the movie. Plus, bunnies are really boring, too, so it won’t be hard.”

Zayn blinked, shaking his head a little bit and backtracking. “You do realize that having pets in the dorm is illegal here, right? And illegal in every other boarding school in Glastonbury? Or any boarding school in the whole of England, in fact?”

Louis snorted. “As if you haven’t done anything illegal here. Who here covers for you and tells the housemaster it’s a fog machine making all the smoke outside our window every evening?”

Zayn glared at Louis’ smirking face. Of course he was playing the smoking card; couldn’t let Zayn forget about the _one_ illegal thing he did of his own free will. “And what if the housemaster finds out while you’re gone? You know he’ll blame it on me, he _hates_ me.”

“Oh, please,” Louis gave Zayn a Look. “Grimmy likes to think he knows everything that goes on around here, but you and I know he doesn’t realize the half of it. You’ll be fine.”

“If you don’t come back right after the movie, I’ll strangle you.”

“How frightening,” Louis waved his hand dismissively and then clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Thanks, mate, I owe you one!”

“Yeah, you do,” Zayn muttered as the door shut behind an already-retreating Louis. Sighing, he looked down into the box and glared at the animal. It was peering up at him, squashed nose wiggling rapidly, reminding Zayn of someone tapping out a Morse code message.

“What are you looking at?” Zayn grumbled, making a face at it.

He picked up the box and moved it under Louis’s loft, shoving comic books and various crumpled school papers and a uniform blazer and tie out of the way. He glared at the fluffball again for good measure before trudging back to his tidy side of the room and flopping down into his armchair, grabbing his English homework from the floor.

Louis was wrong. Crookshanks was not a boring rabbit. Zayn couldn’t believe that a creature so small that couldn’t speak any noises could be so ridiculously annoying.

“Oi, keep it down, fluffy,” Zayn said as the box jostled a little bit. Which, of course, did nothing but get a few responding jostles from the box.

After an hour of trying to ignore the insistent scratching and thumping noises, Zayn threw his homework on the floor and strode over to the box, glowering into it. Crookshanks was on his hind legs, sniffing at a corner of the box. It looked kind of adorable like that, but Zayn shoved the thought away. He wasn’t going to get attached to this illegal thing of Louis’s, not this time.

“Don’t bunnies just take naps all day?”

Crookshanks looked up at him silently.

“Figures that Louis won the only rabbit in the entire world that doesn’t act like other rabbits,” Zayn muttered darkly, giving in and extending a hand down towards it for it to sniff.

_Nip._

“ _Shit_ ,” Zayn hissed, yanking his hand back and inspecting his finger for any signs of…rabies? Tetanus? What did bunnies typically have?

“Demon rodent,” Zayn accused, kicking the box half-heartedly in retaliation. It wobbled, but stayed upright, and Crookshanks stopped jostling it.

Sighing, he straightened and headed for the door. He should probably go wash his hand and make sure he wasn’t going to die of some sort of poisoning. Louis would hear about this.

Niall, one of Zayn’s hall mates, was in the bathroom when Zayn walked in.

“What’d you do, mate? Your finger’s bleeding a little.”

Zayn thought quickly. “Nicked it with some scissors, is all. Stings, though.”

Niall nodded sympathetically as Zayn washed and dried his hand as quickly as possible to escape. If anyone else found out about the bunny, there’d be a bigger chance of Grimmy getting a whiff of it, and god only knew what would happen then.

“Oi!” Zayn shouted as he opened his door and a small gingery blur rocketed out into the common room.

He stumbled back from the door and searched the room wildly, eyes finally falling on Crookshanks about ten feet away next to a couch, rubbing his front paws over his face and staring around in triumph.

“Idiot thing,” Zayn growled, hurrying over to grab him.

But Crookshanks was too fast and bounded another few feet away under a coffee table. Zayn stumbled, muttering curses under his breath as he repositioned himself and kept chasing.

Every metaphor Zayn had ever heard about rabbits being quick was absolutely right, he thought, slumping in a chair and panting after a few minutes. All the things he’d heard about their cuteness being deceiving was also true. The only person to come through the common room hadn’t seen anything unusual in the dim light, which was a relief, but the damn rabbit was still loose, always just this much faster than Zayn. Louis was absolutely in for it. Harry Styles too; what was the idiot thinking, letting Louis Tomlinson leave that card game with a rabbit?

“Crookshanks, if you don’t stop that this _very minute_ ,” Zayn snarled as he stood up and lunged for the rabbit yet again.

This time, victory. Zayn caught hold of one of his feet and kept a firm grip, scooping the fluff up into his arms and avoiding getting his hands too near the bunny’s mouth.

“ _Malik!_ ”

Zayn whirled around to see Nick Grimshaw, his housemaster, glaring at him. His stare slid down to the bundle in Zayn’s arms, and his eyes widened.

Oh, great. Zayn opened his mouth to explain, but he couldn’t think straight. All that kept running through Zayn’s head was, _I am going to_ kill _Louis._

So he shut his mouth, turned quickly, and high-tailed it away.

**Author's Note:**

> See? Lighthearted antics.
> 
> Any takers on turning this into something longer? Possibly just a log of all the antics Zayn gets roped into? I'd add the other boys in.
> 
> COMMENT and let me know!
> 
> Much love :)


End file.
